I interrupt the regular diet of guerilla planting round here lately, to mention an upcoming event that local folks may wish to attend and people further afield may enjoy hearing about:the famous Knitting Nannas Against Coal Seam Gas (Fracking to some) are coming our way!

These women are my kind of crafters… they came to the Newcastle Local Court to support those of us arrested at the Break Free protests against fossil fuels recently and I had a great chat with a Knitting Nanna. I was knitting a sock, which impressed her, and she was a Knitting Nanna who is not a grandmother and can’t knit, which impressed me! The Knitting Nannas are active all over the country wherever fossil fuel extraction threatens waterways, agricultural land and the climate. They work with Lock the Gate (to oversimplify, farmers and rural people against fracking). And for those wondering why the fuss about fossil fuels, I’ll summarise a bit more, on a day where we are facing a once in 50 year weather event right here at home and floods threaten houses on our quiet street for the second time in two weeks. If we want a viable climate for the future, and we don’t want an escalation in droughts, floods, tornadoes and extreme weather in general, we have to stop taking fossil fuels (coal, gas and such) out of the ground and burning them. The clock is ticking faster and faster and reaching even the targets agreed at Paris is fast becoming unrealistic. If you’d like more information, here is a very bracing, readily understood summary by Bill McKibben. If thinking about climate change scares the wits out of you and you need some help with your despair, try Rebecca Solnit on optimism, first.

And, while we are on the theme of Nannas, it seems that grandparents are the new black! I taught mending at this event a few weeks back and it was such a pleasure. I also joined my friend (below) who spent hours teaching small people how to sew a button on. I was just astonished how many small people wanted to learn from us. But my friend had such a winning strategy, opening with, ‘You get to choose which button, what colour of thread, and which piece of fabric’! I followed her lead (she really is a Grandma, and clearly the best sort) and taught quite a few young ones how to sew on a button… and some came back for a second one. Then my friend would finish up with explanations of how that button-on-fabric could become a brooch… a patch… a feature on your t shirt…

Go you! It is maddeningly hard to knock some common sense into the heads of the powers that be. You. Do. Not. Ruin. The. Planet. That. Sustains. Us. All. Why is it so hard to get? Money is not a currency you bring along when you cross over. Love and kindness is. Caring. For instance for the coming generations, doing our best to make sure they have a living planet to inhabitate. With bees and butterflies an clean water…

Always reminds me of cartoons with the dumb character sitting on the wrong end of the tree branch as he (yep, every single time, “he”) saws away at it….If it were only him going down it would be eye-rolling funny. Unfortunately we’re all on the same branch as the idiots.